FYI, all indications are that UK econonomy is going to perform worse than Europe, at least for the near term.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/bu...d.html?_r=1&em

You might have to register to read the whole story. But some snippets.


Now, with both housing prices dropping and institutions like the Royal Bank of Scotland buckling, the British economic outlook looks even bleaker than the landscape in the United States and the euro zone, the countries that use the euro.

The British economy is expected to shrink by 2.9 percent this year, compared with a 2.6 percent drop in the euro zone and a 2.1 percent contraction in the United States, according to Gilles Moëc, senior economist with the Bank of America in London.

Further, they are comparing the UK to what S European countries were like 15 years ago. Yikes!

He predicts the budget deficit will equal 9.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, compared with 4.9 percent in the euro zone and 8.4 percent in the United States.

“It’s scary,” he said. “It reminds me of what you could find in southern Europe 15 years ago, during the worst years in Italy or Greece.”

But, still, without being fluent in Spanish, the UK might be the best place to ride out the storm

That really is a terrible article, plenty of supposition, very few facts.

It talks about how the UK economy has been based on house price inflation - but fails to mention that many other countries have also been - Spain, Ireland, Denmark, France, Australia etc - http://www.economist.com/markets/ran...ry_id=12754835

It talks about the FTSE drop, but doesn't put it in any context whatsoever - British stocks have followed the pound lower in recent days as well. The benchmark FTSE index has fallen 2.1 percent this week This doesn't tell us whether the UK stocks are worse than the US, Germany, Japan, France etc, just says that they have gone down, sorely lacking in context.

It avoids mentioning things like harmonised unemployment rate comparisons http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/Index.asp...e=View&Lang=en where the UK has done and is doing very well (maybe most pertinent for someone in Spain considering heading back to the UK).

Whilst talking about how bad the pound drop has been, it does at least at the end point out that a weakened pound might not be a bad thing - of course they don't mention that the pound has probably been over-valued for the past few years - the "Big Mac" index currently places the pound at about the right rate against the $ http://www.economist.com/markets/ind...ry_id=12991434

The guy the article quotes above is from the Bank of America - they have just been baled out for $20 billion plus further guarantees of $118 billion (this is after the $25 billion of capital injection its already had) - BoA's shares have dropped 30% since the beginning of Jan - what the F$*k does he know?

I honestly don't know if Britain is going to fair worse than other developed countries in this recesion, it certainly faired better than most comparable economies for the past 12 years, but obviously past results are no guarantee of future performance. I do find that Brits love to talk down their country and almost revel in the "UK is going to do worst" kind of mentality (not a dig at you ATO).

Certainly the very poor article cited doesn't have enough context, depth, history or data to give anyone enough evidence to take a sensible view.

I think the press, as always, sell more papers with "Doom & Gloom" articles. Its not so sensational to mention that Tesco's are creating 10,000 new jobs and that some construction and associated companies are doing reasonably well etc. They just want to mention the failures.

Re tradesmen, sorry tradespeople as a customer I would say the thing everyone moans about, apart from the job being up to scratch, is: reliability/communication, ie if someone says they're coming Monday morning & then can't get there at a certain time, do they ring & confirm when they'll be there? etc etc and the two things people give brownie points & recommendations about (apart from up to scratch etc) are reliability/communication as before, and cleaning up/tidiness. If you take up a trade, whatever trade, and stick to these rigidly, your chances of serious success, rather than just making do, are in my humble opinion very much better.

..and re the press. Always remember they wouldn't sell 'em if we didn't buy 'em..

This article from the paper is pure scare monger and nothing like what it suggests.

This is absolutely true.Personally I think the media scare and give the impression that there are NO jobs in the UK. Yes a few companies have gone into administration but there is still work. the Royal Mail are hiring,Supermarkets are hiring,there are still pages of jobs in the Yorkshire Evening post on a thursday,Theres jobs in agnecies,Local council and online Job centre.
I think the problem with some people is that they are picky about what they want to do.Someone who has been made redundant in a nice cushy 20k a year office job wont go out and work in Tesco's on 13k because it is beneath them so they sign on until a similar jobs come available.
I spoke to a man who I knew that lost his HGV job a few months back,who was on £10 an hour. He said there were HGV jobs but they were rubbish ones on less money and was waiting until the right one came along.
This annoys me because instead of taking a lower paid HGV job he prefered to wait 'until the right one came along'

Be that as it may, the fact is that it's been 30 years since things have been this bad. While the earlier article may not be as balanced as we would like, it does not change the fact that UK is in bad shape.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7846266.stm

UK in recession as economy slides

The UK is now in recession for the first time since 1991, official government figures have confirmed.

Gross domestic product fell by 1.5% in the last three months of 2008 after a 0.6% drop in the previous quarter.

That means that the widely accepted definition of a recession - two consecutive quarters of falling economic growth - has been met.

It represents the biggest quarter-on-quarter decline since 1980, and a 1.8% fall on the same quarter a year ago.

The worse-than-expected contraction sent sterling to a 24-year low against the dollar, with one pound buying $1.355.

Meanwhile the FTSE 100 index fell almost 2%, below 4,000 points.

And you think Spain is fine and dandy????

No not at all. But, everybody here keeps talking about how bad things are in Spain, I just want to point out that things are bad everywhere right now. Of course, being in a foreign country where you are not completely fluent in the language and you are competing with locals for jobs make things harder. But, don't expect the UK to be a bed of roses either.

No one saying it is however there are jobs in the UK.
Tesco have announced they are creating thousands of jobs, there are also pages of jobs on the online JobCentre.
Next week I have to look for a job in Spain and I would say a good 95% of them jobs will require you to Speak spanish like a national. My friend is a singer in Benidorm and I have just been speaking to him on the internet and he says dont even bother looking for bar jobs because the existing staff are now sharing the hours because of the lack of people.

At least in the uk I stand much more chance than here